VAIL, COLORADO – Here at the Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships, while high-flying Olympic talents like Chloe Kim and Mark McMorris show off their skills, a lesser known crew brings their tricks to life. A team of camera operators ski backwards, using stabilizers to shoot live video while following riders down the course.
The camera crew works for company called Motion State, whose visual work spans both the sports and entertainment worlds, from Red Bull to Ryan Lewis. Corey Koniniec, one of Motion State’s owner-operators, sits under a lift tower before the first hot practice of the day: “I made snowboard films for 15 years, towards the end of my career I worked for Burton, then I started doing follow cam work for the US Open.